The present application relates generally to media advertising and, more specifically, television advertising. In particular, the application relates to computer-implemented methods and systems for selecting inventory units for a television advertising campaign to optimize audience reach for a target television audience.
An inventory unit is a time block (i.e., a specific time period (e.g., primetime, a specific hour, during certain content, etc.) during which one or more television programs are aired on a particular channel or network) or a particular television program or series, during which television advertisements can be displayed to viewers.
Advertisers use television for its broad reach, but plan campaigns according to impressions, which are the number of times any viewer sees a particular advertisement. Use of impressions is the easiest way to quantify expected results of an advertising campaign. Measuring impressions, however, is a proxy to the real value of television advertising, which is broad reach. Reach refers to the number of unique viewers who see a particular advertisement.
The value of individual television inventory units is indexed to a price-to-impressions metric. Since advertisers typically have limited budgets, they tend to purchase inventory having the best index. When this planning method is used, a final number representing the potential of success for the campaign is the summation of the individual inventory units' impressions. This can lead to inefficient results. For instance, if an advertiser buys two inventory units back to back, there is a high likelihood that the same viewer will watch both advertisements. This amounts to twice the spend to show the same viewer the same advertisement, which is an inefficient use of an advertising campaign budget.
It would be desirable for advertisers to improve the efficiency of their advertising campaigns by, e.g., spending less money to achieve the same or greater effectiveness in terms of audience reach, or the same amount of money to achieve greater reach.